Here’s a quasi humanoid robot that is designed to be your workout trainer. He’ll show you the exercises, give you motivational and encouraging pep talks and even play games with you. We think the idea sounds good, but in execution, he flails his arms and randomly says creepy insincere sounding things like “I’m having fun. I could play this game all day long. I’m having too much fun.” That’s just creepy.

[Mr. Nelson] got sick of walking all the way down the hall just to see if there was anyone in the bathroom. His solution was to build this massively overdone indicator light system. It uses a proximity sensor located in each bathroom to determine occupied status and has a fantastic industrial look.

If you’ve ever wanted to get into 3d photography you’ll be pleased to see this writeup on how to build a simple rig and compile the images for different viewing methods.

We were amazed by these beautifully crafted brass machines. The one in this video is solar powered and seems to run pretty smoothly. Not bad for something that was all hand crafted from sheets of brass.

Be careful with this one folks. This video shows how to melt a beer bottle in your microwave. We’re not sure why you would want to, but we sure enjoyed watching it happen. Maybe that’s reason enough.

I am guessing the robot is designed for physical therapy based on the “exercises” it is attempting, but to me this seems like a terrible application for robotics.

Isn’t the point of physical therapy to have a compassionate person guide you through the intensely emotional struggle of re-learning basic mobility? If I was in some accident where I needed physical therapy, and they put me in a room with this thing, I would be furious. I would want a human that could relate to me and actually help me, not just a bunch of servos grinding away and spitting out canned “encouragement”.

Robotics are better suited to mundane, repetitive tasks; things that a robot naturally excels at. To me, this makes about as much sense as a robotic grief councilor. Putting a robot in a situation that requires human emotion and empathy is a lot different than putting a robot on a car assembly line.

After watching the video from the brass machines link, I’m a bit confused – It’s obviously a solar-powered steam engine. Not a sterling engine, mind you, but a SOLAR-ElECTRIC cornish pump style engine. Unless there’s an electric micro-boiler in there somewhere, I’m a bit confused…That, and it may just be my old-ass laptop, but it seemed that it “moved to the beat” of the background music… Now, I can truly appreciate the craftsmanship here, but something just doesn’t seem quite right…

oh also, search youtube for “is it a good idea to microwave this” like over 100 videos of various cool things to microwave
such as FURBY and LIGHTBULBS
and BIGGER LIGHTBULBS
(anyone miss no capitalization on hackaday?)

I’m not sure if the engine in the wine glass IS
steam powered. It would be even more cool (hot!)
if it focused sunlight to make steam. But hey,
I’m just an ant compared to his abilities…
Hmmm, maybe if the solar cell powered a Peltier element
to condense the used steam back to water for reuse.